The world is often unforgiving and ableist even without climate breakdown. In the video below, Áine Kelly-Costello dives into why it’s important to look beyond the climate crisis, racial justice, gender justice and disability justice as single issue siloes and instead build cross-movement solidarity. Watch the video below to find out more.
You can find the descriptive transcript underneath the video.
In this video we’ve featured footage from the Disability Justice Project an amazing global grassroots media network and hub for documentaries by and about persons with disabilities, and footage from Detroit Disability Power and the Black Disabled Lives Matter March in Detroit in 2020. We also reference the Disability Justice Principles by Sins Invalid.
Want to deep dive into this topic? Read the article this video is adapted from, written by Áine for the Disability Debrief newsletter and check out this resource list they have put together.
Descriptive transcript
[Video description: In the first shot, a light-skinned person in a wheelchair is carried by four other people above shallow water during a flood. Then Áine Kelly-Costello, the narrator of the video, speaks directly to the camera. Áine is white and is wearing a grey t-shirt with a 350.org logo on it and text which reads ‘we can build a fossil free future.
Áine Kelly-Costello: Climate justice cannot be separated from disability justice. Here is why:
Footage by Alla Elnady of a light-skinned wheelchair user trying to cross the road but the curb is too high and they are unable to get onto it and away from the oncoming traffic.
Áine Kelly-Costello: The world is often unforgiving and ableist even without climate breakdown.
Shift to footage by The Daily Moth of a dark-skinned person holding a microphone and giving a speech at a rally. They have short black hair, and have a mask around their chin and they are wearing gloves. They are wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Black disabled women matter’. The video then shifts to footage by Nuanua o Le Alofa of a medium-skinned person writing at a desk. The video then shifts to footage by ICRC of a medium-skinned person walking with crutches holding a gray bucket.
Áine Kelly-Costello: We as disabled people feel it particularly hard when countless extra layers of oppressions are landing on us.
Footage of a storm where palm trees are blowing in intense wind, engulfed in gray fog. The video shifts to footage of a wheelchair user being airlifted into a helicopter being rescued from a flood. Video shifts to footage of a light-skinned person in a wheelchair being carried by four other people above shallow water during the flood. The video then shifts to a medium-skinned person breathing into a ventilator.
Áine Kelly-Costello: from being forgotten in superstorms to considered dispensable in a pandemic. Or both at once.
Shift to Áine speaking directly to the camera. Then the video shifts to a photograph of a group of mostly light-skinned people of different genders standing in front of the Royal Court of Justice with Friends of the Earth. The video zooms in on different members of the group. Placards they are holding include one that says ‘I lost my home to coastal erosion’, ‘climate justice = disability justice’, ‘new climate adaptation plan now’.
Áine Kelly-Costello: The root causes of our oppression and those of climate breakdown are similar.
Footage by ICRC of a medium-skinned person using crutches to cross a room. Shifts to footage by Nuanua o Le Alofa of a medium-skinned person with a shell necklace addressing a room. Shifts to footage by the Daily Moth of a medium-skinned person in a green Sari being pushed in a wheelchair in a rural setting.
Áine Kelly-Costello: Most disabled people live in the global south, are Indigenous or people of color and live in poverty.
Footage of a dark-skinned person with their hands in fits and their arms crossed across their chest, wearing a mask with a clear panel in the middle so people can see their lips. They are wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. They start using sign language.
Áine Kelly-Costello: Everyone fighting to uproot unequal systems and center care instead can learn a lot from disability justice.
Shift to Áine Kelly-Costello talking directly to the camera. The video then shifts to footage by Nuanua o Le Alofa of a medium-skinned person standing by a poster on the wall with a handwritten list pointing at the list and talking to a group of people, mostly medium-skin tones and different genders.
Áine Kelly-Costello: For starters, an integrated approach which moves beyond single-issue siloes.
Sins Invalid logo comes onto the screen. Sins Invalid’s 10 principles of disability justice principles are presented as a list as Áine is speaking. [Text on screen: 1. intersectionality, 2. leadership of those most impacted, anti-capitalism, cross-movement solidarity, wholeness, sustainability, cross-disability solidarity, 3. interdependence, 4. collective access, 5. collective liberation.]
Áine Kelly-Costello: Sins Invalid created 10 Principles of Disability Justice to guide an approach that is led by those most impacted, anti-capitalist and centred in cross-movement solidarity and sustainability.
Shift to footage by Nuanua o Le Alofa of people with medium-skin tones in a classroom sat at desks by. Shift to footage by Nuanua o Le Alofaa of a medium-skinned person being pushed in a wheelchair. Video shifts to footage by Nuanua o Le Alofa of someone with a medium-skin tone speaking to a room of people who also have medium-skin tones.
Áine Kelly-Costello: Marginalized communities coming together can birth pockets of a world where they fully belong.
Video shifts to Áine Kelly-Costello talking directly to the camera. Video shifts to a photo from @DisabledAndHere of two people with medium-skinned tones and one person with a dark skin tone. One person in a wheelchair, holding a pink and blue trans flag and a rainbow flag. Video shifts to footage by Daily Moth of light and dark skinned people at a march and a dark skinned person at a rally using sign language.
Áine Kelly-Costello: The lived reality of disabled queer and trans, Black, Indigenous and people of colour in the US gave rise to the first disability justice frameworks.
Shift to Áine talking directly to the camera. Shift to photos of light skinned and medium skinned wheelchair users speaking at the Global Disability Innovation Hub and UN Climate Summits.
Áine Kelly-Costello: There has to be space for us in grassroots activism and in international negotiations. Let’s continue to make our voices heard.
Shift to Áine talking directly to the camera.
Áine Kelly-Costello: and work together to create the world we want to live in. To read more, see “Where Disability and Climate meet” article on the Disability Debrief newsletter by Áine Kelly-Costello.
Video ends with a black screen and the 350.org and Disability Justice Project Logos.]